A young Don Juan is found murdered in front of his apartment building early one morning, and an elderly couple is reported missing after an excursion to the ancient site of Tindari—two seemingly unrelated cases for Inspector Montalbano to solve amid the daily complications of life at Vigŕta police headquarters, in this fifth book in the series. But when Montalbano discovers that the couple and the murdered young man lived in the same building, his investigation stumbles onto Sicily's brutal "New Mafia," leading him down a path more evil and more far-reaching than any he has been down before. With his sardonic take on small-town Sicilian life, his gustatory predilections, his delicate balancing act between the official and unofficial worlds he inhabits, and his genius for deciphering the most enigmatic of crimes, Inspector Salvo Montalbano has won millions of fans worldwide. First appearing in Italian in 1994, and in Stephen Sartarelli's superb annotated translations since 2002—as well as in an Italian-language television series starring Luca Zingaretti—Andrea Camilleri's sly and witty series "breathes out the sense of place and the sense of humor that fills the air of Sicily" (Donna Leon).